Posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 11:34 pm CET

Today the United States National Archives and Google have launched a pilot program to make the National Archives available for free online through Google Video. The non-exclusive agreement will enable researchers and the general public to access a diverse collection of historic movies, documentaries and other films.

“This is an important step for the National Archives to achieve its goal of becoming an archives without walls,” said archivist Professor Weinstein. “Our new strategic plan emphasizes the importance of providing access to records anytime, anywhere. This is one of many initiatives that we are launching to make our goal a reality. For the first time, the public will be able to view this collection of rare and unusual films on the Internet.”

“Today, we’ve begun to make the extraordinary historic films of the National Archives available to the world for the first time online,” said Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of technology at Google. “Students and researchers whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 – the historic first landing on the Moon.”

The National Archives and Google are exploring the possibilities of expanding the on-line film collection and making the Archives extensive textual holdings available via the Internet.